Sabre Travel Network, the leading provider of high performance solutions for the travel industry, today announced the roll-out of its highly anticipated Sabre Red Automated Exchanges. The new capability provides the highest level of automation for the air ticket exchange process, enabling agents to significantly reduce the time it takes to exchange and reissue a ticket compared to the manual process. Sabre agencies who beta tested the solution have reported savings of up to 20 minutes for each ticket processed.

“Automated Exchanges is our newest feature of Sabre Red and another example of how Sabre consistently brings innovations to market that meet the needs of our customers,” said Martin Cowley, Senior Vice President, Sabre Travel Network, Europe, Middle East and Africa.  “It significantly reduces time and training required for new agents, enhances efficiency and productivity by simplifying the exchange, and enables agencies to spend more time providing value to their customers rather than working on a process.”

The new product further enhances the automation already offered in Sabre’s existing Refunds and Exchanges solution. When travellers want to change their ticket, the agent can use Automated Exchanges to automatically return a new ticket price, with fees and taxes calculated for the new journey.  The solution is designed to ensure the best low fare option is selected by notifying the agent when it is cheaper to book a new flight, rather than reissuing the original ticket and incur an airline booking change fee.  In addition, Automated Exchanges integrates Sabre’s low fare shopping to search a range of alternative flight options for travellers who are prepared to consider other flight times to secure an even lower new ticket price. 

“Our participation in the beta program has shown great results and we are especially pleased with the significant time savings we’ve seen,” said John Owen, Managing Director of TD Travel Group, a UK travel agency. “We look forward to implementing this new capability across our company and enjoying the benefits it brings to our business.”

Sabre Red Automated Exchanges is available for 50 of the most popular airlines, representing 80% of ticket reissues processed through Sabre.  Agencies using Automated Exchanges can save up to one day of manpower for every 50 tickets reissued.  Sabre is the only GDS to enable all ticket exchanges and refund transactions across airlines within one consistent workflow.

Automated Exchanges will be available to Sabre agents as part of the new Sabre Red total travel solution.  Launched in June this year, Sabre Red is an innovative portfolio of solutions designed to help agencies drive customer loyalty and power business performance. In July, the company commenced its global rollout of Sabre Red Workspace, the agent platform at the heart of the Sabre Red solution.  To date more than 4,000 customers in over 70 countries have upgraded to the new Sabre Red Workspace, with the majority of other Sabre customers expected to upgrade by the end of the year.

Automated Exchanges is now available in the UK and Ireland, and will be rolled out to Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Greece, Switzerland, Israel, UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar in the coming year.